


flood

by Trilies



Category: Dishonored (Video Game), Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Gen, Introspection, Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-07-18 22:46:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7333627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trilies/pseuds/Trilies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where Mukuro and Ken bear the Outsider's mark, Chikusa doesn't. He has a lot of questions about "why"... But he also has a lot of petty stubbornness that guarantees he'll never ask them. </p><p>Having staring contests with shrines is obviously a much more productive use of time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	flood

Velvet draperies whose purple has turned a stranger shade still from the incandescent glow of the lanterns, teeth strung along in garlands that shine sickly, and a single token place in a manner reverent on a chipped bowl.   
  
In the city of Dunwall, such shrines are plentiful. Dark times drive people to dark measures. For even a glimmer of salvation, they snap necks and carve bones are make desperate please to these shrines all over. Very few know the true way to talk with the dark eyed spectre who connects to the world via these shrines, and, more often than not, they've made no bloody sacrifice.   
  
Chikusa Kakimoto is neither of those people.   
  
If there's blood on his hands, it's not because he's robbed a life at a grim shrine in the forsaken parts of the city. For all he knows how others reach through the Veil, not once has he ever been spoken to by something older than this whole city.   
  
Despite these facts, he sits crosslegged on the dingy wooden floor in eerie light that makes his own dull lavender eyes shine like a beacon. In particular, they shine on the mark drawn in something blacker than ink against a clear circle of bone. That exact same mark is what has taken up his entire life, present even in his most intimate moments when Mukuro slides one cool hand beneath his jacket or Ken presses it against his pants with a shameless daring grin. They glow, those marks, when the three of them set out into the city to wreak havoc or set up strings to pull in the web that is Dunwall's social world. It would fit perfectly on one of Chikusa's own bone pale hands.   
  
In the dimness, his jaw tightens.   
  
But there's no mark.   
  
Every day, that fact pulses a poisonous jealousy through his body. Is it jealousy? Bitterness is more vague, but no less true. No less potent whenever he sees Ken flicker like a shadow across rooftops or Mukuro need only a glance at a building to see every single one of its inhabitants past wood or metal.   
  
_You're leaving me behind._  
  
For all that these shrines are utterly useless to _him_ , however, Chikusa knows the location of every single one in the city. A map of Dunwall coats the inside of his skull and falls across his eyelids whenever he blinks. Give him one of paper, and he could mark every shrine's place in a heartbeat.   
  
After all, such shrines are not useless to Mukuro. That's all that matters.   
  
At least, that's what Chikusa tells himself as he sits taciturn and vacant faced alone in a room. As he stares daggers at a shrine of bleached bone and fine drapery like he can _will_ that ethereal creature of the Void into appearing.  
  
He has questions. For as long as he can remember, he's always had questions although he's rarely asked them. It was easier, when he was a child, to watch _others_ ask questions and, in turn, get punished for them.   
  
_Why both of them and not me? Why am I the only one left stranded? How could I not use the same abilities as Ken just as well as him? How am I supposed to stay with them when I can barely keep up now?_  
  
Armed with a poison coated blade and a wire sharp enough to cut through skin and arteries, there's nothing to fear of asking questions now. Still, he doesn't. He stays quiet, and stares.  
  
Through Ken's unreliable grumblings after he snaps out from his Void brought daze and Mukuro's, frankly, equally unreliable sly hints after exactly the same, Chikusa has only the _faintest_ idea of what the Outsider is like. Not nearly enough to explain why he's the sole person in their small band of outcasts which doesn't bear void ink scarred into his hand.   
  
He could ask Mukuro. Could even try asking Ken. Yet just the _thought_ feels acidic.   
  
It feels like losing.  
  
Of course, maybe this is losing, too. He's losing Mukuro and Ken to wisps of shadow and secrets he can't follow them into. He's losing the ability, day by day, to be as fully useful to his leader as his partner can be. In order to even keep up, he has to scramble to find other uses for his existence- domestic skills that keep them sustained, knowledge of poisons when arcane violence won't do, information gathered and hoarded off of the filthy streets. In order to keep up, he has to fight against his own desire to sink into atrophy and just _stop_.   
  
What a tiring battle. The rewards are worth it he tells himself, over and over, like the lost souls scrawl mantras of the Outsider's existences on rough brick.   
  
For all that he can not and will not make inquiries to the others, Chikusa is well aware that he could try making one to the cold rune carved in bone that is set before him. He's seen many others try before this moment while he's hidden in shadows and corners watching. Always watching. Far as _he_ can tell, none of them have ever truly received an answer. Their rantings and pleas are dismissed.   
  
Words are effort. From seeing the things that have been spun by Mukuro's sly tongue, Chikusa might even say that words are the most precious sort of effort one can ever make.  
  
Chikusa won't waste such a thing on a spectre which has tossed aside so many words from others before him. If this is anything, it's a war of attrition, and he will not be the one to surrender first. Such stubbornness is one of the few things that he has to his advantage.   
  
Today, however, it seems like this particular battle will come to a draw like so many others before it. Not much natural light reaches most shrines, but he can spot just enough to know that the day's light is nearly extinguished. Night is coming. That means Mukuro will likely have more things for him and Ken to accomplish throughout the crumbling city, since the night is always best for the kinds of things they set out to accomplish. Ignoring the sore ache of stiff muscles, Chikusa pushes himself off and dusts away dirt from his pants. One last glance to the shrine-   
  
He doesn't think.   
  
One moment, he's standing perfectly still. The next, ceramic clattering against the floor is ringing in his ears and the side of his hand is throbbing. It feels a hundred miles away. He stares down at the faintly rosy patch of flesh that stands out against his skin, expression exactly the same as it was ten seconds ago: absent.   
  
As if nothing had ever happened, as if there aren't chips missing from the rune and the bowl still rolling, Chikusa twists on his heel and leaves.   
  
Mukuro needs him.   
  
  
  
  
  
Some mortals, the Outsider has come to learn, are a lot more interesting _without_ the gifts he could bestow them.   
  
Chikusa Kakimoto could wield any of his gifts effortlessly. He knows this as fact. The fact that he blends so well into shadows speaks enough of how he'd command them flickering from place to place like his companions. Yet that is a Chikusa that would be _dull_ , an impressive fact considering the boy's usual tendency to be a part of the background instead of the action as it is already.   
  
Yet even something superficially plain can have skin peeled away to reveal crimson brilliance.   
  
During the great flood which greedily claimed a part of Dunwall for its own, never to give it back, there were men who ran to and fro desperately to try and stop the leaks which proceeded the worst of the destruction. They'd fix pipes that kept breaking, shove sandbags against straining barriers of wood, anything and everything that _could_ be done. It'd all been for naught, of course.   
  
Watching Chikusa live out his life, trying to smother a part of himself with a desperation worse than the drowning engineers, is rather similar from the Outsider's point of view. There's no way for him to stop what's coming, the distance his companions go either literally as their morbid band traverses rooftops or spiritually whenever they're drawn into the Void. It's emotion seeping through the cracks, bursting through pipes, and Chikusa is a one man engineer trying to keep it all from going under. It shows in the way he flings himself so recklessly across gaps that no one content would ever dare, breath forced out of his lungs, and he doesn't stop. He keeps chasing after the only people that give his life value. The Outsider watches it all with interest and perhaps faint amusement.   
  
It'll be fascinating to see what he does when his makeshift dam breaks.

**Author's Note:**

> Expect more of this self indulgent AU, because if there's anyone who fits the Dunwall "occult and backstabbing and bitter powerless people getting sweet revenge" aesthetic, it's the Kokuyo Gang.


End file.
